A Bitter Man, Soured on Beer and Given to Claims

Your result for The 3 Variable Funny Test...

the Wit

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Your result for The Character Actor Recognition Test...

The Ultimate Recognizer!

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Too much experience could be hurting your IT job search
Research shows that employers looking to fill high-tech positions now seek lesser experienced IT pros

Everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.

The Transporter Bay is a designated NO BEARD ZONE. Bearded crewmembers will be identified as evil mirror universe versions and ineffectually shot at.

Uncomfortable Plot Summaries

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
DIE HARD: Dysfunctional cop saves marriage by murdering foreign national.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.
FIREFLY: In an analogue of the post-Civil War west, a white man on the losing side bosses around a black woman.
GHOSTBUSTERS: Unemployed college professors destroy hotel with nuclear weapons.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.

Fiction World Rocked as Woman Claims No Sexual Attraction to Neil Gaiman

At a recent book signing, Joan Green, 24, stunned her friends when she admitted that upon meeting Neil Gaiman, she did not find him attractive. “He was nice and all,” she confessed a few minutes after getting a copy of American Gods autographed. “But, he’s not, you know, my type.”

I saw Watchmen this afternoon. It was better than I was expecting—I think it was as good as it could possibly be, given the complexity of the source material.

I'm worried, though, about the influence it's going to have on future comics adaptations, it and The Dark Knight. See, around 1985-86, DC published the one-two punch of the Watchmen comic and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It kicked off what some people call the "Dark Age" of comics. Suddenly, everybody was competing to see who could put out the most DARKNGRITTY comics, each one more godawful than the last. They tried to emulate the style, and the concept of superheroes as damaged people, but they failed to capture the qualities that made Watchmen and DKR great. Every mainstream comic looked like this.

I'm afraid of the same thing that happened to superhero comics happening to superhero films. It's been an awesome couple of years for good, fun films that are simultaneously faithful to the comics and yet also deliver what Tom DeFalco called "hoo-hah." I'm thinking of the first two X-Men films, the first two Spider-Man films, Batman Begins, Iron Man, and hell, I even liked The Incredible Hulk. We don't need the filmic equivalent of Rob Liefeld coming in and wrecking the whole thing. (Some would argue that this has already happened, but that's just uncharitable.)

So if superhero movies could skip the whole "superheroes as sociopathic douchebags" era that the comics industry fell into after Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, I'd be a happy man. That's why I think they need to make a Nextwave film. Less of the derivative brooding anti-hero nonsense, more of THE EXPLODO, please.

Your result for What is the Measure of a Man? The Gentleman's Test...

The Classic Gentleman

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If you start the interview by putting me on the defensive about having been out of work since October, then follow it with questions to the effect of,"Well, if you weren't doing automation at your last job, then what WERE you doing?," then you've got no business acting all surprised when I say I don't want to link to you on LinkedIn.

(More TNG mashups here.)

I broke the 2,000-word mark on my "goth Sherlock Homes" story.

Woooo.

I hate to admit that right-wingers might be right about anything, but apparently terrorists have been emboldened by the Obama Adminstration.

Today is the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth.

( CHOOSE A RAVEN )

From the Wall Street Journal, via Digby's Hullaballoo:

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin."

Funny, I'd always understood that "virgin" was the accepted term for people who had read Atlas Shrugged.

Dear Lord:

I am not a praying man, but PLEASE LET THIS BE TRUE.

I came home from a very pleasant New Year's Eve trip to find out that one of my favorite authors, Donald E. Westlake, has died of a heart attack at the age of 75.

As the obituary notes, Westlake is best known for the "Dortmunder" novels written under his own name, and for the novels he wrote under the pen name Richard Stark about a criminal named Parker. He was also nominated for an Oscar for writing the screenplay for The Grifters (which was adapted from a Jim Thompson novel).

One of the more glaring omissions in my background as a reader is that I've never read any of the Parker novels. But me and John Dortmunder go way back.

In the mid-90s, I worked as a board operator for an AM radio station. My job was to be there. Every half-hour, I had to put in a new cassette of some hillbilly ranting about JAAAYYYY-ZUS, but mostly, my job was to have my ass in a chair. (This was, by the way, excellent training for my career as a QA contractor). I think I got more reading done in those few months than in any other several years of my life. One of my discoveries was Piers Anthony (which, yes, was perfectly adequate as a time-waster for a 23-year-old. I WON'T BE JUDGED BY THE LIKES OF YOU). My other discovery was Donald E. Westlake.

My first couple of Westlake books were a collection of short stories, of which the title currently escapes me, and The Fugitive Pigeon. They grabbed me enough that I picked up Bank Shot, which was my introduction to John Dortmunder. In the novel, Dortmunder and his gang steal a bank. Yes, the whole bank. I was hooked. Before I quit that job, I think I'd run through the library's entire Westlake collection. Unfortuately, I found myself with a lot less time for recreational reading, so I didn't really keep up on the series.

Not three weeks ago, just by sheer happenstance, I ran across my local library's copy of Thieves' Dozen, a collection of Dortmunder short stories. I loved reacquainting myself with Dortmunder and his milieu. It was a great reintroduction, and it would also be an excellent introduction for the first-time reader (translation: DO check it out, won't you?)

RIP, Don Westlake, and thanks.